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Sergei and Sergei

Maybe they don’t really belong together; Sergei I (Rachmaninov) was eighteen when Sergei II (Prokofiev) was born. Their music is certainly very different: Rachmaninov’s deeply rooted in the romantic tradition; the young Prokofiev’s iconoclastic – the music of an enfant terrible. And yet, in the early days, they seemed to shadow one another: both were virtuoso pianists, both were part of the exodus from Russia after 1917 (Rachmaninov never to return, Prokofiev to go back after nineteen years), and both were constrained to earn a living as concert pianists doing gruelling tours of the States and Europe.